You Enter the Forest Deep Part 1: A System for Generating Intersting and Scary Fantasy Forests

You've been walking along the rough dirt road for hours. At first, you barely noticed the sea of trees surrounding you. It was peaceful here. Birdsong and the gentle rustling of leaves in the wind kept you company. It is only now that you realize you haven't felt the sun in hours. The trees have grown larger and closer, leering over you like starving wolves. Shapes move in the shadows, eyes close the second you turn to the see them. You feel a bitter wind down the back of your spine, like the breath of the forest that now acknowledges you inside it.

You have entered the Forest Deep.

This is the start of a new series I'm creating called You Enter the Forest Deep (YEtFD). Forests are the most common type of biome in fantasy (or at worst second most common) yet they are generally relegated to "area in which trees grow". Forests are far more interesting than that. That's what YEtFD is about: creating a more interesting fantasy forest. One that are dark and deep and dangerous.

The Forest Deep.

You've been to the outer edge of the Forest Deep before. It's a calm place of plants and animals and fungi. Gentle and calm, the sun still regularly blesses the forest's floor. The Forest Deep is something more primordial and ancient. The trees grow larger and thicker, light grows dimmer, and all that remains is the creaking of trees older than kingdoms and the songs of beasts humanity wished to forget. You are welcomed within the forest. You are a trespasser within the Forest Deep.

The Forest Deep is a single living organism. The forest is a cyclical form of life, where one thing feeds another in a grand loop, but this is far more obvious in the Forest Deep. All things are connected. Roots tangle together and the trees share their thoughts which grow as moss, devoured by the elk who feed the Wolves. From the Wolves, all know of the Forest's thoughts and wishes.

The Forest Deep abhors order. It accepts the presence of civilization at its edges, offers them lumber and game as a peace offering, but those who delve into the Forest Deep are signing an invisible deceleration of war. To build a settlement within requires an offering of peace, something the Forest wants but cannot have. Perhaps revenge, or maybe the return of a treasure stolen. The Wolves provide protection. The elves survive by staying hidden from the Forest Deeps thousand watchful eyes.

The Three Truths.

1. The Forest Deep is one living thing, a vast macroorganism connected by roots and mycelia networks. Its thoughts are encoded in moss.
   
2. You are always being watched in the Forest Deep. 
3. The Forest Deep is hard to navigate. Landmarks are rare and impossible to see from the forest floor.
   

Exploring the Forest Deep.

The Forest Deep is not traversable like a normal forest. Think of it instead like caverns connected by tunnels, the few pathways between parts of the forest that link together in a vast maze. It is safe, relatively speaking, on these paths, but lose the path and you lose your way. The trees are too similar to the eyes of mortals to make good landmarks, and the Forest itself tries to trick you and turn you around. If you must walk the Deep, stick to the paths.

All are slow to traverse the Deep, unless you are a friend of it. You can manage about 6 miles in the Forest Deep, but this translates to two piths a day. Friends of the Forest Deep are aided by it, and can move twice as fast.

One rarely needs rations within the Deep. The Forest is rich with food and even a barely trained forager can find enough to feed 10 while traveling in the Deep. The berries and fruits within the Deep grow larger than usual. An apple could be the size of your head.

The Enmity of the Forest. 

The Forest Deep is willing to accept your presence as long as you play by its rules. Performing any action the Deep finds distasteful draws its enmity, and you do not want the enmity of the Forest Deep. Harming a tree or lighting a torch are minor annoyances to the Deep. They increase enmity by 1. Starting a campfire, feling a tree, or building a permanent structure of stone anger the Forest. They increase enmity by 5. Starting a wildfire or eating the moss send the Deep into a blind rage. They increase enmity by 20. Elves and druids do not draw the Forest Deep's enmity for minor infractions.

The enmity of the Forest decreases by 1 each day you spend outside of the Deep or hidden from its view. The Deep can forget minor transgressions over time. You might also lower your enmity by making a deal with the Forest.

The Wolves. 

Every morning, roll a d20 and add your enmity. If the result is 21 or greater, the Wolves are on the hunt. If you have yet to anger the forest, there is no need to roll. The Wolves are not so ignoble as to hunt the kind.

The Wolves are the princes of the Forest, it's stewards and tenders. They are noble and gentle and can be full of love just as they are full of the Forest's rage. Whenever you encounter the Wolves, subtract your enmity from any opinion roll. Whenever the Wolves are on the hunt, they are automatically hostile. Killing a Wolf doubles your enmity. The Forest will not forget such a trespass lightly.

Paranoia and Light.

The Forest Deep breeds paranoia. You are always being watched. The shadows are always following you. It is natural to be afraid.

Sum your intelligence and wisdom scores. This is a measure of how much paranoia you can take.Traveling in the dark builds paranoia. For each day you travel without keeping torches or lanterns lit, you gain a paranoia. For each night you sleep without a fire, you gain 1d4 paranoia. While lost, paranoia gains are doubled. While below 10 paranoia, you begin to see and hear things. Your paranoia gains are doubled. If you are also lost, paranoia gains are quadrupled.

If your paranoia hits 0, you succumb to the Forest Deep's maddening influence and become one of the bolemen. This is equivalent to dying.

You've Lost the Path.

It is inevitable that you will lose the path. Take a d20 and place it on 20. This measures how long before you find freedom. For every action you take to escape, subtract a d6. Wandering a day, climbing into the canopy, starting a fire (the smoke always flows to the edge), getting the assistance of an animal, or eating the moss count as actions to escape.

Once the d20 reaches 0, roll a d6. On a 1 or 2 you walk out of the edge of the Forest Deep. On a 3-6, you find a random pith. Your path might be impossible. This is fine.

The Moss.

The Forest Deep communicates via moss. It takes time, but the Forest Deep can speak through the plant. Things grow faster than usual within the Deep, but the moss can still take days to get fully formed thoughts. The moss near the center of the Forest holds its ancient memories. Nothing eats of this moss.

You may eat the moss to hear the words of the Forest Deep. It speaks in concepts and vague emotional ideas. You'd be a fool to think the thoughts of a giant woodland super organism would be anything other than alien. Still, the Forest Deep knows things ancient and sacred and the deep moss can answer questions lost to time.

But beware, prodding at the moss of the Forest Deep is like something prodding at your own mind. It is obvious and infuriating. The Forest will not forgive it easily.

Generating the Forest Deep.

If you were to look at the Forest Deep on a hexmap, it would be a massive sea of trees. On a 6 mile hex, the outer most hexes are normal forest. The next layer has a 50% per hex of being the Forest Deep, then 75% for the third. Any layers deeper are always the Forest Deep If an outer later is the Forest Deep, the inner layers are also part of the Forest Deep.

Places within the Forest Deep are called piths. Piths are individual landmarks and locations that represent the forest around them. They're connected by pathways, and sometimes by the canopy or the rootways. The Forest Deep is essentially a giant pointcrawl. A macrodungeon.

Creating the Maze.

Start with entrance piths. As many as you want. If you'd like to determine it randomly, a d4 for a small Deep, a d6 or d8 for a medium sized one, or a d12 for a massive one. If there's a road through the deep, have it connect some of the entrances. It is ruined and cracked and the stones that once formed it are home to roots now, but it is still a road.

For each pith, roll 2d6. One d6 controls how thick the canopy is, and the other how dense with foliage and roots the floor is. For each pith roll another d6. On a 4-6, there's a landmark. If not, the pith is simple Forest and paths. Landmarks are common in piths. The paths are often formed between them.

Roll (1d6)	Floor Density	Canopy Density
1	Bare stone, moss, and dirt	Large, common patches open to sky
2	Grasses and small bushes	Rare patches open to sky
3	Thick bush coverage with tall grasses	Shaded, with rare sunbeams
4	Bushes and roots	Covered but still bright beneath, like shade
5	Roots choking out bushes	Covered, like a moonless night
6	Thick tangle of roots. No other plants	Completely covered. Pitch black.

Pathways. 

For each pith, roll 1d4. It has that many pathways. For each path, roll a d6 to determine the path type using the table below. Paths can be drawn to new piths or old piths, but a pith should never have more than 4 paths. If either the floor or canopy density of the pith is a 1, subtract 1 from the roll, and if either the floor or canopy density of the pith is a 6, add 1 to the roll.

Roll (1d6)	Pathway
0	Beast Highway
1	Beast Path
2	A Stream or River
3	A Road Not Yet Destroyed
4	Elf Road
5	Destroyed Road
6	Root Path
7	Dryad Tunnels

Beast paths are thin paths of packed dirt, the roads used by animals big and small. Beast highways are like beast paths, but wider. These are the roads of the Wolves. Elf roads are made of plants, wound together in a path. The Forest does not recognize them as roads. Root paths are made by roots growing in strange patterns, like a wooden road. Dryad tunnels are paths through trees and foliage created by gently coaxing the Forest Deep to grow that way.

Entrances to the Canopy and the Rootways. 

On floor density 4-6, roll another d6. On 4-6, there's an entrance to the rootways. On canopy desnity 4-6, roll another d6. On a 4-6, there's an entrance to the canopy. More information on the rootways and the canopy to come.

Who Rules These Woods.

Few live in the Forest Deep. As the Deep hates law, such institutions as civilization struggle to take root within her boughs. That has not stopped some from finding their home within the Forest.

For any pith of the Forest Deep, there's a 20% chance it is ruled by someone. You could up that to 50% for a more lively Forest Deep. If a part of the forest is ruled, roll a d8 and consult the chart below to see who rules it. If a faction rules a pith, there should probably be a location in that pith related to that faction. More information on these factions to come.

Roll (1d8)	Faction
1	The Wolves
2	The Ants
3	The Ettercaps
4	The Aes Sidhe
5	The Eoten Moot
6	The Wealden Court
7	The Bolemen
8	The Elves

There is also the option to allow the factions to control large portions of the Forest Deep. To do this, for each pith that is the home of a faction, each adjacent pith has a 50% chance to be owned by the faction, and each pith adjacent to those has a 25% chance. If you do this, only use each faction once in the Forest Deep.

d66 Places Within the Forest Deep. 

Here is a list of place one might find within the Forest Deep. Feel free to add others as well. Parenthesis show what faction might relate to the location.

Roll (d66)	Location
1	A mage's tower, long overgrown and abandoned. It's top peaks out of the canopy. (Any)
2	An elf village, nestled in a difficult to spot grove. (The Elves)
3	The mouth of a cavern. (The Wolves, The Ettercaps)
4	A patch of burnt forest. (The Ants, The Entin Moot)
5	A dryad grove. (The Entin Moot)
6	A roaring waterfall. (Any)
11	A large outcropping of rock, like a miniature mountain. (The Wolves)
12	Giant mushrooms. Lots of them. (Any)
13	An abandoned religious site. A cemetery thick with growth. (The Wealden Court)
14	A small steading carved out of the Forest. (The Bolemen)
15	A circle of stones. (The Wealden Court, The Entin Moot)
16	A giant ant mound. (The Ants).
21	A great tree, held aloft by its roots. A grove grows between them. (The Wealden Court)
22	Spiderwebs. Hundreds of them. Connecting every tree. (The Ettercaps)
23	A bridge, crumbled to ruin. (Any)
24	A giant insect hive. Perhaps wasps. Perhaps stirges. (Any)
25	A village, claimed by the Forest Deep. (The Bolemen)
26	A faerie ring. (The Aes Sidge)
31	A clearing. A rare bit of respite from the Forest Deep. No paranoia gains while sleeping here. (Any)
32	A pond or lake, run over by pond scum. (Any)
33	A fortress or castle swallowed by plants. (Any)
34	A hollow tree, a village built in its inside. (The Elves)
35	A creek or river or pond, dry and dusty. (Any)
36	A patch of the forest overcome by blight, rotting and dying. (Any)
41	A collection of carved human-sized wooden dolls. (The Aes Sidhe)
42	Six great stump seats. (The Entin Moot)
43	A fortress of upturned earth and carved trees. (The Ants)
44	The great hole of a giant trapdoor spider. (The Ettercaps)
45	A patch of the forest where the trees have thorns and are drawn to blood. (Any)
46	A part of the forest flooded with knee-deep water and inhabited by mangroves. (Any)
51	The workshop of a hermit alchemist. (Any)
52	The cavern home of an elven oracle. (The Elves)
53	A failing logging operation. (The Bolemen)
54	A patch of the Forest Deep that has died. The trees are malformed. (Any)
55	A part of the forest so rich with flowers the air is near solid with pollen. (The Ants)
56	A lich's mage tower, still in use. (Any)
61	A trader's cart, pierced and held aloft by roots. (Any)
62	The corpse of a great stag, still struggling to live on. (The Wolves, The Elves, The Wealden Court)
63	A charnel house, surprisingly unclaimed by the Forest Deep. (The Bolemen)
64	The remains of a battle. (Either The Ants and The Ettercaps, or The Wolves and The Elves)
65	A crystalline growth, glowing and humming with energy. (The Elves, The Wealden Court)
66	The Moss Library. The center of the Forest Deep. It is here ancient memories are stored in moss. (The Wolves)